Judge Delays Reinstating Superintendent Hill

A District Court Judge has asked for more information before he issues an order allowing State Superintendent Cindy Hill to resume her duties as head of the Wyoming Department of Education.

In January, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled that a 2013 law that removed the elected superintendent as department head was unconstitutional. Laramie County District Court Judge Thomas Campbell ordered attorneys for the state and Hill to file written analyzes over the next three weeks on whether any parts of the law are constitutional. Senator Hank Coe of Cody says that’s good news.

Coe co-chairs the education committee that will try and fix the unconstitutional issues in the law. He says it appears that Campbell may tell legislators what to fix.

“I’m hoping for some direction and it would be very, very helpful if we could get some direction, because I think clearly there’s a lot of the stuff in (the bill) that is constitutional. I still believe that to this day, otherwise we would not have run the bill.”

The Joint Education Committee will meet next month to draft a bill to try and make the law constitutional. The full legislature would have to pass the bill in a special session in order to make the law constitutional.